Page 118 of Dark King Daddy

I stood. I set the cup on the counter. I stepped into him—one step, the distance closing—and I kissed him.

Not the morning kiss from yesterday, the one the car horn had interrupted. Not the patient, measured kiss from the sofa. I kissed him with the frustration of a woman who had woken up biting a pillow, who had spent ten minutes in a shower that accomplished nothing, who had been told to wear something he wanted to rip off and was already calculating which dress would make him forget his own name.

“I want you,” I said. “I want you now. Right here.”

His hand came to my waist. His fingers spread across my hip. He held me—not pulling me closer, not pushing me away. Holding me in place. His mouth opened against mine, and for three seconds the kitchen was the only room in the house that existed.

“You’ll get me, devotchka. But not now. When I say.”

I pulled back.

“This evening,” I said.

“Seven o’clock.”

I picked up my bag. I walked to the door. I did not look back, because if I looked back I was going to cancel Harbor House and drag him upstairs and the dress would never get worn.

Ilya was already outside. The car was running. I slid into the back seat and stared out the window as the row houses of Dover Street slid past.

The ink-blue dress. Backless. Low-cut. I had bought it two years ago for a gallery opening in SoHo and never worn it because the open back had felt too exposed, too much, too direct. I had tried it on in the fitting room and looked at myself in the mirror and thought: this is not a dress for someone who is managing.

It was a dress for someone who wanted to be seen.

I was going to wear it tonight. And I was going to watch his face when he saw it, and the wanting was going to be on both sides of the room, and tonight—tonight—I was not going to be sent to bed alone.

I pressed my forehead against the cold window glass and smiled.

Icame downstairs at seven.

The dress was the most deliberate thing I owned. Open back, cut low enough that the fabric began just above the curve of my spine. The front dipped below my collarbone—not aggressively, not the kind of neckline that announced itself, but enough that the hollow of my throat and the line of my sternum were visible. The fabric moved when I walked. It was heavy silk that caught light and held it, and in the mirror upstairs I had looked at myself and thought: this is either the best decision I’ve made in this marriage or the most reckless.

I had pinned my hair up. I wanted the back of the dress to have the stage.

My heels marked the staircase—a slow, measured descent, each step deliberate. I held the banister with one hand. My other hand was empty. No bag, no phone, no folder of dispatch records. Just me, in a dress I had never worn for anyone, walking downstairs to meet the man I had married.

Daniil stood at the front door. A guard I didn’t recognize—broad, dark-jacketed, the particular stillness of hired vigilance—occupied the space beside him. They were mid-conversation, Daniil’s phone in his hand, something about a route change and a checkpoint on Hamilton Avenue.

He looked up.

The conversation stopped. Not trailed off—stopped. The sentence died between his mouth and the air. His hand lowered the phone to his side. His eyes moved from my face to my shoulders where the silk ended and my bare skin began. The assessment was not subtle. It was not meant to be.

The guard cleared his throat and found urgent business on his phone.

I stood on the bottom step and let him look. I let the silence fill the hallway. I let him see the dress and the bare back and the pinned-up hair and the low neckline and I did not fidget or adjust or reach for a wrap. I stood there and received his attention and the receiving was its own kind of power.

“You look beautiful,” he said.

His voice was lower than usual. The words came out stripped of the composure he wore like a uniform.

He crossed the hallway. He stopped in front of me. He put his hand on my bare waist — the first time he had touched the skin there — and he kissed me. Not a greeting. A claim. His mouth pressed against mine with a directness that made my toes curl inside my heels. His palm was warm against the silk at my hip. His fingers spread across the low curve of my back, just above where the fabric began.

He pulled back. His eyes were dark.

“Turn around,” he said.

I turned. The hallway light fell across my bare back. I felt him look at me—the full length of the exposed skin, the line of my spine, the place where the dress began again at the base of my back.

“Good choice,” he said.